The latest Boeing and aerospace news, including updates about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, 747-8 and 737, Airbus A380 and A350, the anticipated Boeing 797 and Boeing jobs and layoffs

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787 supplier: What went wrong

Aviation Week has a good interview this week with a key 787 supplier, Hamilton Sunstrand President David Hess.

He has an interesting take on why the untested 787 production system had a meltdown. In meeting the July 8 rollout date, Boeing rushed production of the first plane, Hess told the publication.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

After key suppliers fell behind, “they panicked a little bit and rather than follow the logistics plan that they had planned on where everything gets delivered to the structure partners … they said, ‘Everybody just send your stuff here. So bang, tens of thousands of parts ended up on the factory floor without any documentation or traceability. They had to start putting a jigsaw puzzle together without any directions.”

Hess says the problem cascaded because 787 managers didn’t realize how long it would take to dig out of the mess, a process that included documenting components and creating drawings needed to satisfy FAA certification requirements. “They continued to underestimate how tough it was to recover from Airplane 1,” he says. “If you look behind that, [airplanes] 2, 3 and 4 are all starting to flow now. But they’ve still got to get Airplane 1 in the air.”

Still, he predicts Boeing’s much-maligned supply chain model will be proven out in the long run. “It will take them a little while to get it ramped up and synchronized,” he says. “But once they get to that point, I think it will be a big benefit to them.”

In a December interview with Boeing jetliner boss Scott Carson, I asked him if trying to meet the July 8 rollout date triggered the 787 production mess, which at the time was only six months late. Now it’s at least 15 months late. Here was Carson’s answer:

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he said of the July 8 date. “It was, at the time, viewed by all of us as the right thing to do. With twenty-twenty hindsight it is an interesting thing to speculate about. I don’t know that it would have had an impact on where we found ourselves in October (when the first delay was announced). That was tied to what was going on in our supply partner factories at that point and what the implications were for us in our factory. I don’t think (the rollout date) affected (the delay) much one way or another.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..